Social media giant Meta has shut down over 40 accounts operated by an Indian firm CyberRoot Risk Advisory allegedly involved in hacking-for-hire services, the online giant said in a report. Meta also shut down a network of around 900 fake accounts on Instagram and Facebook operated by an unknown entity from China.
These accounts focused on gathering data on people in Myanmar, India, Taiwan, the US and China, including military personnel, pro-democracy activists, government employees, politicians and journalists, according to the Hire Industry Monitoring Company’s threat report released on Released December 15th.
“We removed a network of more than 40 accounts on Facebook and Instagram run by an Indian company called CyberRoot Risk Advisory Private. Rather than sharing malware directly in our apps, this group’s activities have mainly manifested themselves in social engineering and phishing, often with the aim of tricking people into divulging their credentials for various online accounts on the Internet”. report said.
Corresponding MetaCyberRoot used fake accounts to create fictional personas tailored to gain trust with the people they targeted around the world and to appear more believable, these personas imitated journalists, businessmen, and media personalities.
In some cases, CyberRoot also created accounts very identical to accounts associated with their targets such as their friends and family members, with only slightly changed usernames, likely to entice people to get involved, the report said .
Meta said it found that CyberRoot was targeting people around the world working in various industries, including cosmetic surgery and law firms in Australia, real estate and investment companies in Russia, private equity firms and pharmaceutical companies in the US , environmental and anti-corruption activists in Angola , gambling companies in the UK and mining companies in New Zealand.
“They focused on businessmen, lawyers, doctors, activists, journalists and members of the clergy in countries such as Kazakhstan, Djibouti, Saudi Arabia, South Africa and Iceland,” the report said.
Meta said it continues to investigate and take action against spyware vendors around the world, including in China, Russia, Israel, the United States and India, which have targeted people in about 200 countries and territories.
The social media company’s research has found that the global surveillance industry continues to grow, targeting people indiscriminately – including journalists, activists, litigants and political opponents – to gather information, manipulate their devices and accounts over the internet and to compromise .
